Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Ten future shocks!

Technology is galloping and we, human beings, need to gear up to meet up with future happenings. I'm just giving you ten of those future shocks. Welcome to tomorrow, it actually arrived a few years ago.

 (a) Health.

       The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies which will build a
       medical device (Called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, that takes
       your retina scan, your blood sample and you breathe into it. It then analyses 54 bio-markers
       that will identify nearly any disease. There are dozens of phone apps out there, right now, for
       health purposes.

 (b) Solar Production.

       Has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but  you can now see the burgeoning impact.
       And it's just getting ramped up.

 (c) Electric Cars.

       Will become mainstream by about 2030. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run              on electricity.

 (d) Real Estate.

       Will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will abandon their towers to
       move far away to more beautiful and affordable neighbourhoods.

 (e)  Look At What Volvo Is Doing Right Now.

        No more internal combustion engines in their vehicles starting this year with the 2019 models,
        using all electric or hybrid only, with the intent of phasing out hybrid models.

 (f)   Facebook.

        Now has a pattern recognition software that can recognise faces better than humans. In 2030,
        computers will become more intelligent than humans.

 (g)  Artificial Intelligence.

        Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer
        beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

 (h)  Uber.

        Is just a software tool, they don't own any cars and are now the biggest taxi company in the
        world. Ask any taxi driver if they saw that coming.

 (j)   Software.

        Has disrupted and will continue to disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5 - 10 years.

 (k)  Airbnb.

        Is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any property. Ask
        Hilton Hotels if they saw it coming.

And mind you, there are many more future shocks coming our way other than the ones I've listed!


Tailpiece.

Maman had woken me up at 6, went through the chores and we were out of the house by a half past 7. Met up with Palode Ravi and M Vijayakumar, before having breakfast and fetching up at the PN Panicker Foundation. Maman could go for his appointment with the chief minister while I tended the store!

We returned home by 1, had lunch followed by siesta. By 4, we were out of the house, yet again to collect lab forms from Maman's doctor and settled down at the Foundation. By a half past 7, Maman's foot pain had gotten to be unbearable and I'd to collect a pain killer from the chemist near Thycaud Hospital. After half an hour of its administration, the pain had subsided.

Had dinner outside before getting back home.

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